I had the credit card nonsense once when I bought my girlfriend a ticket CPH-LHR which was for some reason done as an e-ticket.

There was drama when she arrived at the airport - I was in a meeting and had my mobile off and could not be contacted to confirm or deny the booking - and the BA staff only let her on the plane after she burst into tears.

However, after this incident I think BA automatically issued paper tickets when I bought them for her, and did not charge extra for the doing this. The only problem was that the tickets were delivered to my UK address and I had to ship them on to her in Denmark.

I'm sorry this is proving such a problem - there really ought to be a way for you to buy a ticket for someone else without that other person carrying your credit card around!